Let's summarize Lesson 2, purposeful work. Let's start with the first one that purpose is important during difficult and uncertain times, it's super important. Hopefully we've talked about how important it really is. I think it's important to try to connect your purpose domains because we don't just have a work purpose. Most of us don't. We don't just have a personal purpose. Most of us don't anyway, or a family purpose. Some people do and they're primarily focused on those purposes. However, if we are working, we usually have overlaps or could have overlaps with other domains, like maybe work in community or work in our family or very importantly work in our own personal growth. We may connect our community and family purpose domains. There are lots of ways of connecting our different purpose domains that make things a little more synergistic. Those interactions between domains of purpose may actually create even more than the sum of their domain parts if that makes sense. Third, people have a lot of reasons for working. If you're an employer or you are an employee, it's important for you to understand your reason for working. As an employer, it's important to find out why are my employees working and there'll be working for different reasons. Some for money maybe, some for personal growth. Some because they love their team, some because they love their organization, some because they love what they're building, the product they're building or their clients, or building and improving society in some way. People work for different reasons. Understanding that is so critical to being not only a good manager, but understanding why you're working there in the first place and maybe having a discussion with your manager about the reasons why you're working there seems to be important. Hopefully people will have a listening ear for that because you'll understand why you're working there, but you may not have ever express that no one has ever asked you. It's important. Can I find purpose in nearly every job? My answer is yes. You may disagree, but I've talked to people in all walks of life and every job imaginable, I think. I have found people who are purposeful in nearly every single job that I run into. I would recommend, rather than saying, I have to find the perfect job, I might start saying, can I find purpose through this job that I'm in, and that's important. Now, all of that said, it's important to have the right mindset for this. It's important to have a growth mindset. Meaning, can I actually change my own traits? Can I improve myself? Heidi Grant said, well, a lot of people grow up thinking, well, I'm a math person. Other people who may say, I'm a really good athlete, well, those are fixed mindsets. We may think that we're good in math or not good in math. But could you change from being not good in math to actually being good in math? Those people who think they can actually are much more likely to do so. It's important to have this growth mindset. At the same time, it's important to have a job mindset. What does that mean? It means two things. One part of a job mindset is that you understand what your organization's purpose is, you get that. Somehow, hopefully that's conveyed by your organization, by your manager. Here's what your role is. Understanding that is important. But second and even more important is feeling like you have autonomy, that you have control over your work. That you're not just a sculpture, that you are a sculptor of your work. We have found and new research has shown this very clearly that interventions that are designed to help you grow your own personal self mindset and at the same time to help you grow your job mindset, that leads to greater happiness six months later. You're happy in your job, you're happier in your life. This is super important. The work environment is strongly associated with your ability to find purpose and to become purposeful. We talked a fair amount about those elements of the work environment that are associated with more purposeful employees. That purpose among employees leads to all really good things. You can identify specific behaviors and habits that are related to your purpose. We've talked about be goals, but we also then talked about do goals and we talked about action goals, very specific behaviors, habits that relate to your purpose, that help you become more purposeful. All of these things are important. Finally, if you have all of this working for you, your purpose can be really strongly related to better emotional self-regulation. Your ability to change your own weather if you're cloudy, if you're stormy, if you're angry, in other words, can you move that to being happier? Can you move that to being calmer? All of those things are related to purpose by the way. We know that people with stronger purpose use coping strategies that are better related, better associated with effective emotional self-regulation and resilience. I hope you enjoyed Lesson 2. Look forward to Lesson 3. We're going to talk about purposeful leaders, purposeful leadership, and purposeful organizations.
